A Ballon d’Or nomination for best Men’s Young Talent is due recognition for an outstanding inaugural season from Lennart Karl.

Lennart Karl is the present and future of German football, a player blessed with ingenuity who has already gained the trust of Vicent Kompany to deploy that inventiveness in the right areas, at the right times.

Julian Nagelsmann meanwhile was all set to name the 18-year-old in his World Cup 2026 squad until an ill-timed injury had him look elsewhere.

To date, the teenager has made a trio of international appearances, all three of them pre-tournament friendlies.

For Bayern, a string of outings from the bench evolved to starts last term when his talent and influence became impossible to ignore.

A boyhood prodigy

Born and raised in Frammersbach, Bavaria, the attacking midfielder first came to prominence aged just ten when he impressed at a scouting tournament.

His displays there prompted Real Madrid to fly the boy and his family to Spain for trials.

A year later, an improvised goal scored for Eintracht Frankfurt's U11s went viral. The fierce manner in which he rifled his shot into the top corner took the eye. The unorthodox way he controlled the ball first with his heel in mid-air dropped jaws.

Fast-forward a couple of years and leading clubs were clamouring to sign this gifted prodigy, but really it was always going to be Bayern who won out.

They were the best, and Karl wanted to become the best. It felt like the perfect fit.

Realising potential in a quantum leap

The youngster’s numbers for Bayern and Germany’s under 19 sides in 2024/25 demanded promotion, something that Vincent Kompany was only happy to comply with, selecting Karl for the Club World Cup in the summer of 2025.

For the record, in 31 outings for his club and country at under-19 level, the player scored 34 and assisted 11.

He is, remember, a midfielder primarily charged with creating, not converting.

Talk permeated throughout the Bayern fan-base there was a special talent on the cusp of breaking through. By every account Karl was the club’s most promising homegrown prospect since Thomas Muller many years before.

It felt like an inevitable occurrence therefore when the youngster was handed his first team debut, on the opening day of the 2025/26 season, a 21 minute cameo in a 6-0 trouncing of RB Leipzig.

It was inevitable too that his introduction was accompanied by a tremendous amount of excitement and hype.

That hype only grew in late October when Karl scored his first professional goal, in the Champions League no less, against Club Brugge. In doing so, he became Bayern’s youngest ever goalscorer in the competition.

Four days later he was at it again, converting against Borussia Monchengladbach in the Bundesliga.

When the teenage playmaker then scored in his next two Champions League outings, that hype already seemed justified, and a starting role was secured.

The Messi correlation  

Karl’s low centre of gravity – he stands at 5 ft 6 in his socks – has brought several lofty comparisons to other nimble and poised technicians who can change directions at breakneck speed.

Topping the list is Lionel Messi, an extremely high benchmark that has shrunk many an emerging talent in recent years when their name has been brought up in the same sentence.

Karl, however, has risen to the compliment, taking to wearing a shinpad that has Messi’s image imprinted on it.

“He’s been my role model ever since I could play football – left-footed, small, a player who does incredible things with the ball. Having him with me gives me something to think about. It’s simply an incentive to work hard to make a name for myself at the highest level."

That was the player’s explanation of the shinpad, shared on social media, and two contrasting traits come through strongly in his wearing of the pad, and the motivation behind it.

There is confidence in accepting the comparison, and humbleness in acknowledging how far he has to go.

That’s very Bayern Munich. That’s very Lennart Karl.